The Balvenie "Tun 1401"
Suggested retail price: $225 per bottle. Tonight we're pouring 1 ounce for $7.
Balvenie Distillery is sometimes overlooked in comparison with its more celebrated big sister, Glenfiddich! Located near each other and owned by the same family, William Grant. The Balvenie was an 18th century mansion. Initially the basement of the castle was used as a bonded store to mature whisky. The first floor became a malting floor and the other two floors above were used for storing grain. In the 1920s the distillery was rebuilt and renovated using the same stone blocks of the mansion.
The Balvenie is one of the few distilleries that still grows its own barley and still uses its own traditional floor maltings, among the last floor maltings in operation in mainland Scotland. Furthermore it belongs to the rare breed of distilleries that still employs coopers to tend the casks and a coppersmith to maintain the stills. The coopers tend the traditional oak casks that Balvenie uses for maturation in the cooperage
It is uncommon to find a distillery that still retains these skills in house in this day and age. Tradition has seen to it that successive generations have acquired the age old skill on the malting floor, in the tun room and the still house, in the cooperage and the warehouses. This is how Balvenie has succeeded in preserving the consistency and remarkably high quality of its whisky.
Tun 1401 was an experiment by Master Blender David Stewart to mix multiple casks or in a large, 2000 liter tun (or, mega-cask), marry the whiskies over the period of a few months in the Tun and see what happens. David Stewart has spent 50 years in the business, all of those years with The Balvenie & Glenfiddich.
* Tun 1401, batch 3 is a vatting of 10 casks (7 Bourbon Cask, 3 Sherry butts), which were laid down during David Stewart’s time at the distillery. Each was hand picked by David for this special vatting.
* The oldest cask is from 1967, the youngest from 1989
* The whiskies were married together in a traditional marrying tun, which has a capacity of roughly 2000 liters. The marrying process took place in Warehouse 24 and lasted roughly 3 months
* Total of 150 cases available